First of all brokers don't perform the trades. And I don't know of a SINGLE broker that will permit shorting penny stocks, that being under $5. Call your broker. Try to short NSAV. You CAN'T. Not even if you DO have a margin account, which most don't.
I've gone through the numbers many times, but the key thing is that you are betting that a penny stock will go down vs up. If it goes up, you lose doubly - and you can literally lose it all. If it goes up, you make a little, but not much. The margin is usually $2.50. So to short a million shares of NSAV you'd have to put up $2.5 MILLION DOLLARS to try to make a FEW dollars. And what if it goes up? You lose a HELL of a lot more money than you can make if it goes down.
Thanks for the lesson in shorting. Now go try it. No one, in years of my challenge, has been able to short any penny stock and PROVE IT.
By the way, brokers don't make the trades - they ACCEPT or don't ACCEPT trades, but MM's do the trading. Your broker doesn't 'have' shares...the MM's do.
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